Chapter 56
FIFTY-SIX
Every square inch of Josie’s body hurt. She was hard-pressed to remember a time when she’d been this busted up.
When every little movement made her hiss out a breath.
It had been three hours since she shot Saul Vought at the bottom of that embankment in the woods.
Her adrenaline had long faded, allowing each scrape, bruise, laceration and lump to clamor for ibuprofen and a good, long week in bed.
None of that compared to the pain that was splaying her heart wide open at the moment.
“Josie, you need to go back to the ambulance.” Noah appeared in Saul Vought’s kitchen. He looked just as haggard and defeated as she did.
She waved her bandaged arm at him. “I’m fine.”
It was the one thing she let the paramedics patch up before she joined the search of the house.
Noah stepped toward her. “Your ribs. That bump on your head. You should—”
“Is this your way of telling me it’s time to stop?” she asked, hating the way her voice cracked.
He just stared at her, mouth pulled back in a grimace.
She kicked at the broken floor tile. There was no need to say the words out loud.
She could already hear them in her head.
It’s been hours. We searched every inch of this place multiple times.
The truck has been searched. The areas all around the house in every direction.
There was no sign of Dani Schwarber and Cassidy Turner.
No blood. No freshly dug graves. No fragments of personal effects. No evidence that they’d been here.
“I was wrong,” Josie said. “The Chief was right. I got too arrogant. I thought I was on to something.”
“Josie,” Noah said, taking a step toward her.
“My high clearance rate,” she mumbled, repeating the Chief’s words from earlier. “Big cases. I just thought… because my gut is so rarely wrong, but I was stupid and I let my emotions get in the way.”
“Hey,” he said, drawing close enough to touch her arm.
Tears blurred her vision. “I just wanted there to be a possibility that we could find them, even if they were already gone. I didn’t want Turner to live with that, without closure. I let my feelings cloud my judgment and it almost got Gretchen killed.”
Noah took her hand. “Gretchen’s fine.”
Reluctantly, she had let the paramedics take her to Denton Memorial Hospital to be checked out. They’d gotten word an hour ago that she’d sustained no serious injuries.
“I got lucky,” Josie said hoarsely. “If I’d been badly injured from the fall or more dazed, or if I hadn’t turned around in time or if I’d stopped before the clearing to call for units, she’d be dead. All because I let Griffin Holt dupe me.”
Him and his stupid salesman persona.
“He didn’t dupe you,” Noah said. “There were inconsistencies. Saul was lurking around.”
“I took it too far.”
Noah squeezed her hand. “It’s been a long day. A long week. You’re in bad shape. Let’s go home and regroup.”
Lick her wounds was more like it. Reluctantly, Josie let him lead her through to the living room.
There was a weight on her chest that she wasn’t sure she’d ever be free of.
Outside, several vehicles still lingered.
Two ambulances, a few cruisers, and a couple of unmarked vehicles. The daylight was fading.
“Is he here?” Josie whispered.
Noah sighed. “He’s at the bottom of the driveway. I told Conlen not to let him past under any circumstances.”
“Does he know?”
“No, but I’m sure he’s figured it out by now.”
They’d pass Turner on the way out. She’d have to face him again. His pain, her failure.
You have my family’s blood on your hands, Quinn.
Noah’s hand pressed into her lower back. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
Josie started to trudge toward Noah’s vehicle but stopped when she heard the soft pop of glass breaking. From her periphery was a flash of light, dim but visible. Stopping in her tracks, she turned back toward the house.
“What was that?” asked Noah.
“The sconces,” she said absently.
Through the living room windows came more flashes and flickers.
“All those junction boxes were open,” Noah said. “I didn’t see any exposed wires, but this doesn’t seem good. If this place catches on fire up here, with the drought, it could be bad. We can turn off the breaker but maybe we should get an electrician up here just in case.”
From inside the lights flickered again.
“Yes,” said Josie, feet carrying her back toward the house. “Call one.”
She listened as Noah made a few phone calls, stopping at the threshold to the house. The sconces continued to dance with light.
“I’ve got someone coming up,” he told her, joining her in the doorway.
Flicker, flicker, flash, flash, flicker.
“Noah,” said Josie. “Did these flash like this at all while we were searching today?”
She hadn’t seen them, but she’d been in the other parts of the house or outside.
He scratched the side of his head. “A couple of times, yeah, but nothing like this.”
Flicker, flicker, flash, flash, flicker.
It was a pattern and it was getting faster.
“Jesus,” Noah muttered. “I should go hit the breaker now.”
Flicker, flicker, flash, flash, flicker.
It was a pattern. She was sure of it. Excitement stirred in her belly as she followed him to the basement. She’d already been down there three times. It was filled with old furniture and boxes of books. No evidence of Dani and Cassidy.
But there was a pattern.
“Noah,” Josie said as she ducked down the steps after him. “What would cause them to flicker like that?”
“Exposed wires. I checked all the junction boxes though. All the wires are covered.”
“What do you mean?”
At the bottom of the steps, Noah paused, scanning the large space.
The single light bulb hanging from the ceiling overhead left most of the cellar in shadow.
Noah took his flashlight from his belt. Clicking it on, he searched for the breaker.
“You see how the ends of the wires are capped with wire nuts and then wrapped up in electrical tape? The wires should be fine like that. It could be something loose in the walls.”
They couldn’t see the flicker or flash of the lights now that they were in the basement.
Josie followed him as he weaved through the dusty items the previous owners had left. “What would happen if you took the tape off the wire nuts?”
“Nothing. Unless you touched them together.”
Josie grabbed his hand. “Stop.”
He shone his flashlight between them, illuminating both their faces. “What’s going on?”
“I think—” She broke off. It was insane.
The idea was utter madness. The very definition of desperation.
Was she still grasping at straws even after her monumental failure today?
Did she simply not want to have to look Turner in the eye when they reached the bottom of the driveway and tell him they still hadn’t found his family?
Josie took the flashlight from his hand, scanning the basement with it. Most of the furniture had been covered with drop cloths but they had removed them to make sure there was nothing beneath them. “This stuff is really old.”
Noah wiped sweat from his forehead. “Yeah.”
“At Your Disposal would love this stuff,” she continued.
At Your Disposal was a junk removal company whose owners sold antiques on the side for clients who had valuable items they wanted to make a profit from instead of simply throwing them away.
Josie had learned a bit about those kinds of items during a case they’d solved a month ago.
She ran her finger over the surface of circular wooden table, the center of which was green felt, though it was dusty and faded now.
Along the outer edge of the felt was a compartment that went all the way around the table, deep wooden pockets.
Josie imagined it would hold drinks except that the felt suggested it was used for other things as well. Cards. Gambling.
Something teased the back of her brain. Wishful thinking or instinct, it was difficult to say.
Could she tell the difference anymore? This case—Turner—had her mixed up.
Doubting herself. But here she was in the basement of the house Saul Vought had been renovating, with her husband, the one person she could fail spectacularly in front of and who would still love and respect her, and it felt like she had nothing to lose.
Everything her colleague loved had already been lost.
She touched the smooth wood of the outer ring. It wasn’t unusual for people to have poker nights in their homes, but no one had lived here for decades and she could tell by the style and quality of the table that it was a century old, at least.
A gambling table in a century-old house out in the middle of nowhere.
“Noah,” she said. “This house was built in 1926.”
“How do you know that?” he asked patiently.
“I saw it on the property records when Gretchen and I looked this place up.” She spun away from him, using the flashlight to search the dank room. “You know what was happening in 1926?”
It only took a few seconds for him to catch up. When he said the word, there was both wonder and surprise in his voice. “Prohibition.”
He surged past her, dragging his phone out of his pocket and flipping on the flashlight app, swinging the light wildly around the basement.
Josie did the same, a jolt of energy ripping through her like wildfire.
They pushed furniture aside, kicked boxes out of the way, tore down shelves, fit their fingers into every seam in the walls they could find.
They shouted Dani and Cassidy’s names, then stopped to listen for a response, though Josie could barely hear over the pounding of her heart and their labored breath mingling.
They were both sweaty and covered in dirt and cobwebs by the time the now-familiar doubt began to creep into Josie’s heart.
The basement was huge and with all the items stored inside, labyrinthine.
They needed halogen lights. Maybe they could get blueprints from City Hall.
She was calculating how long that would take when her flashlight passed over several tall paintings leaning against a wall in the northwest corner of the basement. “Noah,” she called.
He made his way over to her in the near dark, panting. “What’s this?”
“Help me move them,” Josie instructed.
Together, they began sliding the pieces aside. There were six of them of varying heights. She didn’t take the time to study them. By the time they got to the last one, Noah grabbed it one-handed and flung it aside. To reveal more wall, except this wasn’t concrete. It was wood paneling.
“This is it,” Josie said excitedly, pounding a fist against it.
It felt thick and substantial but had just enough give to it that she knew they’d found what they were looking for.
A hidden speakeasy.
She screamed Dani and Cassidy’s names but there was no time to listen for a response because Noah appeared beside her with a sledgehammer. She didn’t need to ask where he’d gotten it. They’d seen countless tools during their search.
“Move,” he said.
Josie had never seen him so frantic, so completely focused on demolishing something.
Noah wasn’t a destructive guy but the faux wall didn’t stand a chance against his frenzy.
Over the splintering of wood, Josie finally heard the sounds she’d been praying for since they entered this godforsaken house.
The screams of Dani and Cassidy Turner.